mstance must be emphasized--_at periods when the
existing social conditions are disintegrating and breaking down_. Seeing
on all sides privation and discontent at such periods, the privation and
discontent are forthwith ascribed to the shortness of the supply of
food, instead of to the manner in which the existing supply is
distributed.

All advanced social stages have hitherto rested upon class-rule, and the
principal means of class-rule was the appropriation of the land. The
land gradually slips from the hands of a large number of proprietors
into those of a small number that utilize and cultivate it only
partially. The large majority are rendered propertyless and are stripped
of the means of existence; their share of food then depends upon the
good will of their masters, for whom they now have to work. According to
the social condition of things, the struggle for the land takes its form
from period to period; the end, however, was that the land continued
steadily to concentrate in the hands of the ruling class. If undeveloped
means of transportation or political isolation impede the intercourse
abroad of a community and interfere with the importation of food when
the crops fail and provisions are dear, forthwith the belief springs up
that there are too many people. Under such circumstances, every increase
in the family is felt as a burden; the specter of over-population rises;
and the terror that it spreads is in direct proportion to the
concentration of the land in few hands, together with its train of
evils--the partial cultivation of the soil, and its being turned to
purposes of pleasure for its owners. Rome and Italy were poorest off for
food at the time when the whole soil of Italy was held by about 3,000
latifundia owners. Hence the cry: "The latifundia are ruining Rome!" The
soil was converted into vast hunting-grounds and wonderful
pleasure-gardens; not infrequently it was allowed to be idle, seeing
that its cultivation, even by slaves, came out dearer to the magnates
than the grain imported from Sicily and Africa. It was a state of things
that opened wide the doors for usury in grain, a practice in which the
rich nobility likewise led. In consideration of this usury of grain the
domestic soil was kept from cultivation. Thereupon the impoverished
Roman citizen and the impoverished aristocracy resolved to renounce
marriage and the begetting of children; hence the laws placing premiums
on marriage and children